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McCorkle Cemetery Receives Restoration

by Robbie McCommas

Staff Writer for the Lincoln County News, Feb. 13, 2014

City Manager James Melson inspects the cleanup

A 50th reunion
that brought classmates together last spring encouraged a few individuals to
consider the condition of a deserted graveyard. Though noticed as youth when
driving around the county roads, the men hadn’t thought of the cemetery as the
decades passed.

Chandler graduate Wayne
Pounds, who now lives in Japan, spurred a conversation with Brent LaGere who in
turn took action.

“After alumni Rick Evans and
I went out to the cemetery and looked around one Sunday afternoon,” LaGere
explained. “I had talked to Wayne and we wanted to recognize the area as sacred
ground. Wayne’s cousin Eugene Stidham had family buried there.”

LaGere talked with City
Manager James Melson. Soon he, and Board Member Rick Evans, got a city crew to
work clearing the undergrowth. Carefully, the men removed the weeds and briars
to unveil confirmation of community residents who helped to settle the area.

The cemetery, once noted as
in “reprehensible” condition, was getting groomed for the first time in a long
time.

History of
the cemetery

The Lincoln County Oklahoma History, published in in 1988, states “This old
cemetery once numbering over 100 graves, was probably also used as a community
burying ground. It is now nearly lost in the scrub oak.” It is located near CR
890 and CR 3410, one mile north and two miles west of Chandler.

The farm was homesteaded in
the land run, by Elisha McCorkle and his wife Almira Smith McCorkle. Both sets
of their parents were buried there, (the Joel McCorkles’ and the John Smiths’)
according to history.

The McCorkle’s child, Bessie
McCorkle, married Joseph Gibson and they too, made their home on the farm. The
Gibsons raised three children, Emlee, James Robert and Doc.

Joseph and Bessie were
ranchers and owned a rock crushing business. They were prosperous, according to
Melson who was related to the family by marriage.

After the death of Joseph and
Bessie, the homestead was given to Emlee who was married to Clee Fitzgerald.
Emlee was the mother of Melson’s late wife.

“My wife and I would go to
the property often,” Melson said. “The old rock house is still standing. I’d
cut hay off for Emlee.”

Graves

On Nov. 23, 1962, The Indian
Spring Chapter of the National Society of Daughter of American Revolution
inspected the cemetery and found there were only 17 legible tombstones. They
said many of the graves were probably never marked.

In 1965, Bessie McCorkle
Gibson still owned the land. She said she counted 36 graves at one time but
knew that there were many more, according to DAR. She thought that after the
inscriptions were recorded, some of the McCorkle family was moved to Oak Park
Cemetery.

“In 1992, I visited the cemetery with my dad,” Stidham
described. “Upon looking at unmarked sand stones, Dad recalled the names of
Glen and Loanie Rice who were siblings to his mother, Lennie L. Rice Stidham.
My dad thought the girls were ages three and six. They were buried with native
stone markers near a cedar tree in the cemetery.”

Stidham said the children died in the flu epidemic of
1918. Their parents were Gus and Addie Bell Stone Rice.

“The Find-A-Grave records
reflects three Rice babies in the cemetery, though dad was only aware of two,”
Stidham pointed out.

Bell Cow
Lake caused disunion

With the construction of Bell
Cow Lake in 1986, Emlee Gibson Fitzgerald objected to the release of her
property including the McCorkle Cemetery to eminent domain, according to
Melson.

“She reasoned that her
relatives were buried there and had homesteaded the ground from the Land Run,”
he added.

Eventually Emlee relented and
40 acres, including the cemetery, were consumed for the use of Bell Cow Lake.
Though the cemetery was never touched during the lake’s construction, the
property changed hands for the first time.

On Jan. 3, 1986 a warranty
deed was filed to Chandler Municipal Authority for 40 acres, according to
Lincoln County Assessor Deputy Kala Wakely. Wakely said a note in the file
reads: the McCorkle Cemetery lies in the northeast corner. In 1972, 36 graves
were counted.

Optimistic
future

As the winter weather clears,
LaGere assured the cemetery would boast a new fence, gate and sign to complete
the project.

If the article has jogged a
reader’s memory and they have a recollection of the cemetery or an account of
someone buried there, Pounds asked for those individuals to let him know by
email at wapo@cl.aoyama.ac.jp. In
addition, The Lincoln County Museum of Pioneer History would include the
information in their file. The museum’s number is (405) 258-2425.